1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to medical imaging, and more particularly to a system and method for reformatting medical images using a curved planar reformation.
2. Discussion of Related Art
Vascular visualization of medical image data provides valuable information about vessel anatomy and pathology. Vessel structures, exterior and interior, can be difficult to investigate with current visualization techniques, e.g., multiplanar reconstructions (MPRs), curved MPRs, or volume rendering (VR). Manual creation of curved MPRs can be tedious and time consuming. Other methods for automatic generation of curved planar reformations only consider individual vessel segments. Visualization techniques for whole tree structures have been proposed, but these methods are not flexible enough to handle arbitrary vessel topologies and orientations.
Therefore, a need exists for a method for visualization of vascular structures using a reformatted medial axis.